1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for facilitating the ordering of items from suppliers, and particularly, to novel enhancements for a production part and non-production part procurement system.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,542 entitled SYSTEM FOR ORDERING ITEMS USING AN ELECTRONIC CATALOGUE describes an electronic catalog ordering process and system for procuring commercial parts and services. The system comprises two main components: 1) an electronic catalog which permits on-line access to supplier's catalogs of products and services; and 2) an electronic requisition system which automates the hardcopy requisition and its approval process. The system described is interactive and cooperative use of these two system components enables a requestor to complete a purchase request during one system session.
Generally, according to the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,542 and shown in FIG. 1, the electronic catalog component 100 includes: a supplier master catalog 108 which is a separate catalog separately owned and maintained by the supplier for the purposes of building, storing and maintaining his/her catalog; a public catalog 106 which is loaded with the entire supplier catalog or select catalog items for access by multiple customers, e.g., via a public database 104; and a private catalog 110 which is a special catalog separately owned by the customer and typically resident on the customers local host computer system.
The Electronics Requisition Process is an automated form (not shown) residing on a computer system which is used to initiate the procurement process, and is intended for use by four primary groups, each of which has specific responsibilities with regard to the ordering process and completion of the requisition. The four primary groups include:
1) The Requestor—is the party who defines the need for a purchased item and has the responsibility for creating the purchase requisition. Through an application program (not shown), the Requestor initiates the requisition by accessing the Public or Private Catalog to search for the item of interest. If the item is found, the system will prefill the required fields of the requisition. Otherwise, if the item is not in the Catalogs, the required data is manually entered. The requisition is then routed to the Approver who is the party that will either reject the requisition, and bounce it back to the Requestor, or approve it. If approved, the requisition will be routed to the company's procurement system for items ordered from the catalogs or manually entered items. Typically, the requisition goes to the Buyer for completion of the requisition and approval of the Supplier.
2) The Buyer—is the party in most companies who has been identified as the authorized agent to make purchases. The Buyer typically has responsibility for selecting where products may be purchased, as well as establishing an acceptable price that will be paid. In the electronic processing environment, the Buyer may receive an individual purchase requisition from a Requestor once it has been routed through the approval process. The Buyer may access the Public or the Private Catalog as deemed necessary to perform the normal buying task. When items are selected from the Catalog, the requisition is prefilled with required data and only minimal additional data will be needed. If a non-catalog item is to be purchased, the Buyer will keyboard in the required data to complete the transaction. Once the requisition has been approved, it will then be processed through the company's procurement system and a Purchase Order will be electronically sent to the Supplier.
3) The Approver—is the party that has the authority to validate the need for purchase, that funding exists, etc. This individual will be identified by the company, and system tables will autocratically route requisitions as they are processed by the Requestor.
4) The Application Administrator—is the party assigned over-all responsibility for the maintenance and control of the electronic requisition process. There may be more than one area responsible for different portions of the system. For example, a database administrator may control the routing/approval process in all associated tables. A Procurement Administrator may typically control those areas that relate to the requisition requirements.
It is understood that all user groups will need access to terminals for personal computer workstations to access the mainframe application.
It is the case that the current procurement system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,542 is limited in the respect that there is always required the approval process step irregardless of the item/product being requested for purchase, thus requiring an extra process step which increases production cycle time, and hence, increase cost of a production process. It is further limited in the respect that the prior art automated procurement process for production parts requires active buyer intervention, again, contributing to the increase in production cycle time. Moreover, the procurement process for product/items contemplated according to the prior art system relates to production parts only, i.e., parts having associated production part numbers.
It would thus be highly desirable to provide for an automated procurement system a mechanism that permits greater customer control by eliminating buyer (third-party) intervention, and bases control on the item/part being purchased, and the manner in which it is being purchased, e.g., by contract or catalog. This enhancement wold bypass the step of obtaining management approval or buyer needed if certain criteria is met which would greatly enhance the automated buying process and shorten the purchasing cycle.
It would additionally be highly desirable to provide for an automated procurement system a mechanism that enables purchasing of products/items absent production part numbers. Such a mechanism would permit purchasing of small quantities of vendor parts for new product development areas for which no new part numbers have been assigned, thus shortening the purchasing cycle.